The Universal Woes of Teenage Girls

Wednesday of last week all of my girls arrived at camp in a sour mood. None of them were smiling, some were crying, some would just remain silent.

We sat down early in the morning to talk about what was bothering them. They all kept telling me, “karibe,” which means “nothing” in Nyanja. It kept on this way for quite a while until finally they all began to answer at one time. It turns out that a few of my girls were making fun of Dorothy before school and Dorothy was crying and upset.

As you can imagine, instead of talking about the subject for the day-though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil…we talked about love and forgiveness instead. I encouraged them not to be each other’s enemies. There are too many enemies in the world for your friends to become one also. I encouraged them to talk to their friends about how their feelings were hurt. Afterwards, we talked about the importance of forgiveness, and how to forgive…both in yourself and in another person. There was a lot of talking, done mostly by me. When I didn’t think they were listening anymore I suggested that we stop the teaching for the day and a play game.

To my surprise, they told me that they did not want to play a game that day…that they would rather learn and understand the teachings of Jesus. At this point, I didn’t know how to continue because I was so shocked! We then changed gears and had a very difficult discussion about purity. All in all, it turned out to be a great day! I hope and pray that these girls will continue to learn about how to love each other as women.

Some issues are the same, no matter where you go, and one of them is that teenage girls can be just plain nasty to each other. I am praying that God would continue to grow them in community, that they may lean on and trust and depend on one another together in their walk of faith.